I love smoothies. You can consume several cups of fruits and veggies so quickly and easily, and the format allows your body to absorb the nutrients faster. Isn’t it marvelous?

Green smoothies are my favorite – they provide an amazing morning boost that I can’t do without anymore. Here are a few tips I have picked up since starting my green smoothie journey, with a delicious recipe at the end for you.

1. Keep It Simple: While you can mix in things like chia seeds, supplements, and yogurt or milk, if you want your body to get the most from a green smoothie, keep your ingredient list to just greens (kale, spinach, lettuce, chard, parsley, etc.), fruit, and juice or water. This is optimal for your digestive tract and allows faster absorption of nutrients.
2. Chew: Try to chew your smoothie. Sounds a little silly, right? This encourages your mouth to produce saliva, which helps with digestion.
3. Rotate Greens: When I first started, I only used spinach – it’s so mild and blendable! I learned, though, that greens contain small amount of alkaloids, and you don’t want a build up of the same kind of alkaloids from consuming just kale, or spinach, etc.

TIPS: Using the same greens in a row for a few days is absolutely fine, just try not to go more than a couple weeks without switching otherwise you might experience some digestive upset.

Now for one of my all-time favorite green smoothie combinations: mango, kale, and banana. Mangoes – as well as honey and some seeds – can help clear your skin, are a great source of vitamins E,C, and A, and improve digestion. Kale is high in fiber, iron, calcium, vitamins K, C, and A. And bananas, a classic smoothie ingredient, provide potassium, manganese, vitamin B6, fiber, vitamin C, and…well, the list goes on and on for the nutritional benefits of these three ingredients.

Let me just say, on top of it all, this smoothie tastes amazing!

∴ Green Mango Smoothie

Ready to start? Kitchen time: a few minutes and your healthy drink will be ready to kick-start your day.

→ 4 Ingredients + Water:

• 1 cup frozen mango
• 1 (organic) banana
• 2 cups freshly cut leafy kale
• 2-3 teaspoons lime juice. Why? Read here.
• 2 cups water + 8-10 ice cubes

→ Instructions

Put in the blender and blend until smooth. For a Vitamix about 5-10 seconds on low, and 30-40 seconds on medium/high.

Makes about 4 cups of smoothie.

Happy Smoothie ~ ThePartisanPlate.

♥ I’m Natalie, an unconventional food lover + Blogger at ThePartisanPlate and this is my guest post on www.OrganicIsBeautiful.com

Mango